


Harvey Kinkle

by Sporksprocket



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 09:42:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16890162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sporksprocket/pseuds/Sporksprocket
Summary: In kindergarten, they were told to draw a picture of their family and label each person. When Harvey got home he grabbed a piece of construction paper, pulled out his crayons, sat on the ground, and got to work.Mom, Dad, Tommy, and Me.





	Harvey Kinkle

In kindergarten, they were told to draw a picture of their family and label each person. When Harvey got home he grabbed a piece of construction paper, pulled out his crayons, sat on the ground, and got to work. The paper was light blue, so he didn’t have to color in the sky and he put the sun in the corner. He could hear his mom and dad yelling elsewhere in the house, but Tommy wasn’t home. He leaned down closer to his paper and poured his focus into drawing.

__

_Mom, Dad, Tommy, and Me._

* * *

 

Harvey was seven when his mom left. One day there, the next gone. No note, no goodbye, no forwarding address. His dad refused to even mention her. Sometimes Harvey could almost believe she had never existed. If it wasn’t for the drawing he kept on his desk maybe he could forget. When that failed to convince him, he would wait until his father couldn’t hear and ask Tommy.

 

When he laid in bed at night, listening to the football announcers yelling from the tv in theother room he imagined her hitchhiking all over the country. The Grand Canyon, the Empire State Building, San Francisco Bay, the Statue of Liberty- Harvey may be stuck in Greendale, but his mother was not weighed down but anyone or anything. Not anymore.

 

Other times, after his father has yelled about the money needed for food, or about flag football being inappropriate at his and Tommy’s ages, that tackle is more appropriate, else they may become weak, about Harvey not needing any color pencils for school _what are they teaching you th-_

 

Harvey imagines his mother not making it past the front steps, his father burying her in the backyard with nothing to mark the spot. He imagines his mother bleeding into the soil, seeping into their water, and making the Kinkle family sick with anger and despair.

 

Either way, Harvey wishes she brought him with her.

* * *

 

“ _Tell the story again, the one that mom always told”_

 

“ _I can’t Harvey, I have homework to do. Besides, you know it, why do you need me to tell it?”_

 

_“....I don’t, I guess.”_

 

Harvey closed his eyes and tried to remember his mom kneeling by his bed and her soft voice telling him about the traveler and the hosts he encountered. His mother’s face was fuzzy surrounded by a halo of blonde hair _and which host was welcoming and which turned him away, which was punished with fury and flame and which rewarded with love?_

 

He couldn’t quite remember the story, but he was starting to figure out how things in the real world worked out.

* * *

 

Harvey got into his first fight in second grade. No blood was shed and no knees were scraped, but he was brought to sit in the pirncipal’s office to wait for his father anyways. After an hour and a half, his dad still hadn’t shown and the last bell rang. Outside the office, he could see all the other kids being escorted outside for dismissal and wondered who was going to come get him.

 

After a few more minutes, Tommy appeared at the doorway, having walked to pick him up. Harvey was allowed to leave and told to tell his dad to check his voicemail.

 

After sitting for so long, Harvey has begun to think that no one would ever come to get him and he would be left to rot in the office forever.

 

He doesn’t know if that would be so bad.

* * *

 

“ _A fight?”_

 

“ _Y-yes, I’m sorry, I didn’t-“_

 

His dad held up a hand to silence him. After taking a sip of his beer, he spoke again.

 

“ _Did you win?”_

 

Harvey knew there was only one right answer.

 

“ _Yes_.”

 

“ _Maybe you’re not so chickenshit after all,”_ his dad nodded appraisingly and Harvey took this as his notice to leave.

 

Harvey knew he was chickenshit because he couldn’t even bring himself to tell anyone that he didn’t even swing at the other kid once. He just put his hands up and shied away and took the pain.

 

He was good at that.

* * *

The mines were a maze and he couldn’t get out and he had been in there so long and he couldnt find his way out and Tommy and his friends have to be looking for him, they’ll have to find him eventually, they’ll find him and it will just end up with him being crowned the champion of hiding, he won’t be lost down here, he won’t-

 

A goat that towered over him, an unnatural being that stared straight through him. The mines smelled like matches and Harvey could not move or breathe or think. He could never remember ever being so terrified as he was right then.

 

When Tommy found him five hours later, he was quivering and crying, pressed up against the rough wall.

* * *

 

“ _Harvey! Harvey are you alright?! We’ve been looking for you for hours!”_ Tommy came bounding through the mines and Harvey wanted to scream at him to be quiet, that he’ll find them and they’ll never get out of these mines alive.

 

Harvey doesn’t say anything, just continues to cry as Tommy hugs him.

 

“ _Harvey, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”_ Tommy pulls back to inspect him and wait for Harvey to respond. When he receives no answer, Tommy quiets down.

 

“ _Hey Harv, look at me. Are you okay?”_

 

Since he didn’t know how to answer, Harvey said the one thing he knew was true.

 

“ _We need to get out of here.”_

* * *

 

Tommy doesn’t mention losing his brother for hours to their dad and Harvey doesn’t say anything to anyone. Tommy waits a few days to ask Harvey what happened in the mines but only gets the shake of a head in return. Harvey sits at his desk for hours every day after school and draws through cramped fingers and stiff backs. Tommy waits until Harvey is asleep to go look through Harvey’s drawings. While some are concrete and the others more abstract, they are all of the same terrible monster.

 

Tommy stops asking and Harvey starts to talk more. If it weren’t for the drawings and the sporadic nightmares that woke Harvey up, sweaty and shaking, it would almost be like nothing had ever happened in the first place.

* * *

 

Much later, Tommy will quietly mention to Harvey that no one has ever said anything about seeing anything like his drawings in the mines.

 

Harvey doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse

* * *

 

Middle school introduces Harvey to Sabrina, a petite blonde who attended the other local grade school. They hit it off when they are sat next to each other in social studies on the first day and grow closer together each year. Harvey lets Sabrina’s passionate kindness influence him and lets her positivity mood his outlook.

 

High school sees them become a couple and together in a tight knit group of friends. Harvey forgets himself when he is with them.

* * *

 

Tommy is complimenting his drawings, their “messed up”-ness adding to their quality and not detracting from it. Harvey has never been happier to be called a twisted little weirdo.

 

Excitedly, Harvey tells Tommy about the offer of making posters for the book store and maybe even working there on weekends.

 

“ _That your idea of a joke? You wanna hang out in the back of a comic book shop with some pervert who plays dress up?”_

 

Tommy tried to stick up for him, but Harvey knows it it futile. His father is angry and nothing can stop him.

 

“ _You wanna job Harvey? I gotta job for ya, in the mines. You’ll start with a shift this week”_

 

Harvey hears Tommy arguing with his dad but can’t comprehend the words anymore. It could be waiting for him in the mines and his father has condemned him to finding out.

* * *

 

He doesn’t go into the mines this time. But later, when he does, he sees nothing. His life feels like an excercise in the unnecessary.

* * *

 

Susie’s uncle chills Harvey to the bones and he is eight and in the mines again. There’s no Tommy to protect him now so he won’t be chickenshit this time, he decides, and attempts to keep himself from falling apart.

* * *

 

When he learns Tommy could have gone to college on a full ride he has never hated anyone more than he does himself right now, not even his dad. If he just wasn’t so chickenshit, maybe Tommy would’ve gone and escaped this life.

 

He feels selfish when he’s a little greatful that Tommy didn’t leave him behind, and then hates himself even more for ever being happy that Tommy is wasting his life.

* * *

 

It’s Tommy’s funeral and Tommy might not even be dead and this is ridiculous.

 

When his dad goes to hit him he thinks,  _go ahead, do it, I_ dare _you._

 

When Sabrina’s ain’t Zelda scares him off he almost smiles,  _Who’s chickenshit now, huh?_

* * *

 

Tommy’s back and Harvey has to shoot him.

 

He steels himself and attempts to give back some of the peace Tommy gave to him.

* * *

 

Sabrina is a witch and she has to stay away from him for his safety. That’s what she says to Harvey at least.

 

But at this point, Harvey knows how this goes. He kisses her, and watches another person leave his life, without bothering to ask if he wants to leave too.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comment and all that!


End file.
